This past Monday, the government of Pakistan ordered all of the ISPs in the country to block its citizens’ Internet access to YouTube.com.

Predictably, this decision was met with uproar. Charges of stifling free speech and quieting the masses soon rang across the U.S. from the bell towers of Internet, TV and print media conglomerates.

This wasn’t the first time something like this has happened; Pakistan doesn’t have the best track record in terms of human rights. Before and during its recent elections, the government arrested hoards of protestors on spurious grounds and engaged in mass police beatings. Shortly before elections, the attorney general was caught on tape saying that these same elections would be “massively rigged.” And several days ago, the leadership imposed a ban on all live broadcasts within the country.

But this time, Pakistan’s curtailing of freedom in the name of an all-powerful central state was right on target! Its subsequent interference with YouTube’s IP routing caused a two-hour, worldwide YouTube blackout. For two glorious hours, the rest of the world was free from the yoke of YouTube’s oppression.

Pakistan was actually the third country to block its citizens’ access to YouTube, following Turkey and Thailand. But that doesn’t make its act any less meritorious. It’s ahead of its time in realizing what a horrible, horrible Web site YouTube is. Though Pakistan has stated publicly that its decision was based on blasphemous content, I think we all know that at least part of the decision was based on a clip of a dog humping a boy trying to play Nintendo Wii.

I would go as far as to say that YouTube.com is our society’s worst cultural creation since hampsterdance.com, the Web site that helped us all to realize that 125 four-frame animated singing hamsters is the most annoying thing mankind can experience.

YouTube is the dumpster of the Internet, and that’s saying a lot given that a significant portion of the Internet is already trash. Oh sure, I enjoy the occasional video. I enjoy clips of fat people rolling down inclined surfaces as much as the next man, but really now, is there anything of actual quality on YouTube? Searching YouTube is in many ways like fishing in a pond contaminated by toxic waste. The vast majority of fish you can catch are infected, and if you happen to enjoy eating a fish once you catch it, you’re probably going to get cancer.

I think the bottom line here is that calling the shutting down of YouTube a stifling of free speech is like calling the shutting down of Fox News the stifling of freedom of the press. Sure, both of these cases are technically valid, but god, the world of journalism would be infinitely better off without Fox News and the trash it broadcasts daily. And the world of freedom of speech could get along perfectly well without YouTube.

Perhaps the biggest problem with YouTube is the high-blown rhetoric that surrounds it. An extreme disparity exists between the idealistic and romantic talk of the potential of user-created Internet video and the sad, sad reality. Commentators have championed YouTube as a glorious vehicle for democratic expression and have placed it at the heart of an informed utopian democracy. But . . . YouTube?

Time’s 2006 Person of the Year was “You,” certainly a nod to the Web site and its user-driven content. In the description of the award, the magazine states: “It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”

But YouTube? Sure, we had the YouTube debates, and what a step forward it was for democracy (even if the questions asked were those that would have been asked anyway). But really, YouTube? YouTube should never be used in the same sentence as “wresting power from the few.” Those selfsame debate clips max out around 250,000 views, only several more than the number of views of a shrimp running on an underwater treadmill.

Whatever happened to the day when our culture was defined by such things as “literature,” “plays” and “music?” Gone are the Gatsbies, swallowed instead by the instructional video for the Soulja Boy Tellem’s “Crank That” dance.

And if the comments below the videos are any indication, the English language itself is doomed. The poor spelling and the rampant racism, sexism, anti-semitism and penis references are enough to make any first grade English teacher weep.

So you can see that, in blocking YouTube.com, the government of Pakistan was doing its citizens a service. No more will their ears be pierced by the shrill cry of “leave Britney Alone!!” or the absurd and repetitive chorus of “Chocolate Rain.” And maybe, just maybe, our own government should take a page from Pakistan’s book . . . at least this time.

Send Nat your wacky YouTube favorites at nat.hillard "at" stanford.edu.